As House Race Narrows, Interest Nationally Widens

“This is a really tight race.” KATHY HOCHUL | The Democratic candidate, who led by four percentage points in a recent poll, at a restaurant in Buffalo on Sunday.Credit
Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

National Republicans and their allies in business are making a furious last-minute push to save a once reliably Republican House seat in western New York, as their candidate’s comfortable lead vanished amid voter backlash to a Republican plan to overhaul Medicare.

New polls show that the Democratic candidate, Kathy Hochul, who was initially considered a long shot, has surged in the final days of the race and is in a dead heat with the Republican, Jane L. Corwin.

The special election on Tuesday — which has attracted millions in advertising dollars from a group tied to Karl Rove, from the United States Chamber of Commerce and from both national parties — has been upended by the debate over Medicare: Voters in the sprawling Buffalo-area district now call it the single most important issue in their decision on which candidate to support, according to the poll, conducted by Siena College.

On the ground, Ms. Corwin, a state legislator who early on embraced a budget plan by Representative Paul D. Ryan that would reshape Medicare, has tried to reassure anxious voters, stressing that the House-passed plan is not perfect and that she is open to changes.

“I’m very much interested in entertaining other proposals,” she said Thursday night after a stop in Rochester. “I’m all in favor of doing whatever is going to make the most sense, that’s going to provide the best services at the best price.”

At the same time, Ms. Corwin’s campaign has moved to turn the tables on Ms. Hochul on the issue, showing a television advertisement suggesting the Democrat would undermine Medicare.

“The truth is it’s Hochul who says she would cut Medicare,” the ad says. The Corwin campaign produced the ad after Ms. Hochul said in passing during a debate that “everything should be on the table” in talks over deficit reduction.

The race has unsettled Republicans in Washington, who say a defeat in the special election could doom any future attempts to overhaul entitlements and spell trouble for the party’s House candidates in 2012.

All but four of the 239 House Republicans voted last month for the Ryan budget plan, which seeks to pare federal spending while calling for the biggest changes in Medicare since its creation. House Democrats, none of whom voted for the plan, promised to hold Republicans accountable for approving the plan in the 2012 elections.

“It is an important national bellwether,” Don Levy, the director of the Siena Research Institute, said of the race. “If the Democrats win, then they can say that in a traditionally Republican district, concerns over Medicare tipped the scales for the Democratic candidate. It is understandable then that this race matters so much to Republicans throughout the country.”

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“There's a lot of lies, there's a lot of misinformation.” JANE CORWIN | The Republican candidate in a district her party has controlled, making calls on Sunday, two days before the election.Credit
Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

The race in New York’s 26th Congressional district presents a microcosm of the problems the Republican Party faces nationally. The party’s conservative base and energized Tea Party activists are demanding that federal spending be brought under control and that the deficit be reduced. But any concrete plan to do so risks upsetting independent voters, who are broadly supportive of entitlements like Medicare and Social Security.

Early in the race, Ms. Corwin was steadfast in support of the deficit-cutting plan put forth by Mr. Ryan, even as Democrats seized on public concern that the measure would drastically reduce retirees’ Medicare benefits.

Ms. Corwin’s support is strongest among Republicans, and, in the Siena poll, Republican voters identified the budget deficit as the most important issue in the election.

But as the race has become increasingly focused on her support for revamping Medicare, she has lost ground among independent voters and voters over age 55, who, according to the Siena poll, are throwing their support behind Ms. Hochul.

And like Republican leaders in Washington, Ms. Corwin has found it difficult to grapple with the Tea Party movement, as she tries to fend off the aggressive candidacy of Jack Davis, who is running on the Tea Party line after failing to win the Republican nomination.

Concerned that Mr. Davis was draining support from Ms. Corwin, Republicans produced a wave of attacks on him, including circulating a much-publicized video that party operatives said showed Mr. Davis assaulting a young Republican volunteer who was tracking him with a camera.

But the attacks backfired after it was disclosed that the volunteer was Ms. Corwin’s chief of staff, a development that led the Davis camp to claim that Mr. Davis had been set up. Ms. Corwin was then barraged with questions from local reporters about her role in the episode.

Stretching from the western suburbs of Rochester, through farming country, to the communities northeast of Buffalo, New York’s 26th district is one of the state’s more conservative areas, with roughly 30,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.

It was one of only four New York districts where John McCain defeated Barack Obama in 2008. The House seat has been almost exclusively held by Republicans for decades, producing powerhouses like Jack Kemp.

The special election was called after Representative Christopher Lee, a Republican, abruptly resigned in February after he e-mailed a woman he met on Craigslist a shirtless photo of himself.

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Jack Davis, on a lawn with 4,000 of his yard signs, lost the Republican nomination and is running on the Tea Party line.Credit
Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

At first, the race did not attract much notice outside western New York because Republicans were widely expected to hold the seat. But in recent weeks, both major parties and their allies have jumped in as Ms. Hochul vitalized her campaign with attacks on Ms. Corwin’s Medicare stance.

Prominent Republicans, including the House speaker, John A. Boehner, have traveled to the district, while independent groups have poured money into ads supporting Ms. Corwin. This week, the party had two of its rising stars — Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Representative Allen West of Florida — record phone messages urging voters to support Ms. Corwin.

The Democrats have sent in reinforcements, too. Over the weekend, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand appeared alongside Ms. Hochul to rally supporters at a packed union hall in Amherst. And the Hochul campaign plans to flood households in the district Monday with a recorded phone message from former President Bill Clinton in which he says Ms. Hochul will protect Medicare, cut wasteful spending and help create jobs.

The campaigns are increasingly focused on turnout, which can be difficult to predict in special elections, and both sides acknowledge the race is extremely tight. The Siena telephone poll, which was conducted from Wednesday through Friday, showed Ms. Hochul, the Democrat, with 42 percent and Ms. Corwin with 38 percent. (The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.)

Over the weekend, the candidates hopscotched from union halls to diners, nursing homes and malls, making personal appeals to voters.

“There’s a lot of lies, there’s a lot of misinformation,” Ms. Corwin told supporters on Sunday while going door-to-door in a suburb of Rochester.

At a restaurant in Buffalo, Ms. Hochul told her backers not to take anything for granted. “This is a really tight race,” she said.

The intensity of the race — and the enormous attention it is receiving from outsiders — has startled local residents, leaving many not entirely pleased.

“The commercials are driving everybody crazy here because they’re just coming at you nonstop,” said Hugh Quinn, a 48-year-old minister from Williamsville. “It’s just one after the other.”

Bob Anain, a 47-year-old Republican who is in medical sales, agreed.

“This is a small upstate area,” he said. “And with the special interests involved, the candidates appear to be totally full of it. They take the money they get from special interests, and then they tell us what they think we need to hear in order to get the vote.”

All the commotion and endless advertising caused Donn Esmonde, a columnist for The Buffalo News, to wryly remark in his column Sunday: “At this point, I wish that Chris Lee had kept his shirt on.”

Correction: May 23, 2011

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the contributing reporter, Michael D. Regan, as Reagan.

Michael D. Regan contributed reporting from Buffalo.

A version of this article appears in print on May 23, 2011, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: As House Race Narrows, Interest Nationally Widens. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe